Once Atlantis is discovered the ideas seem to come together with considerably more coherence. The music for Kida being particularly fetching in its light, romantic way, lightly scored for strings with occasional guitar and harp. Howard even does a variation on his gorgeous swimming music from Waterworld during The Secret Swim and The Crystal Chamber, with lightly chiming percussion and wordless soprano vocals. Of course, the city itself is given more imposing ideas replete with choir, which is grander in scale than Dinosaur (and devoid of the curious African element of that score). In fact some of the spookier choral writing actually recalls Williams' underwater music from The Phantom Menace, but Howard uses it with more conviction for a more imposing sound. The action cues are great fun and that cheery type of action that is full of major key fanfares and, more curiously, a hint of Goldsmith's famous echoing trumpet motif from Patton during Going After Rourke.
Atlantis is a little frustrating as the elements are there, but it just doesn't hold up as well as Dinosaur and certainly isn't as memorable. That is not to say it isn't an enjoyable adventure score. The performance and recording are notably superb, with crisp, up front brass which is obvious from the opening fanfare of The Submarine. Where the Dream Takes You is a fairly mediocre ballad; standard issue for this type of film, but pleasant enough. Not quite the winner that Dinosaur was, but still solid entertainment with plenty of incident.
Rating ~ Total Time ~ 54:04
Atlantis
What do you get if you mix Randy Newman's Toy Story and Howard's own Dinosaur? The unsurprising answer is of course Atlantis. Well sort of, certainly the best broad label one could apply to James Newton Howard's latest opus. It has the grandeur of Dinosaur in many places (mainly towards the end) and the breezy Carl Stalling type flits in style of Toy Story (mainly at the beginning). As it was decided to make Atlantis a song free zone (save the end credit song, which was in truth, fairly inevitable), it seemed no great shock that Howard was employed given his success scoring Dinosaur. As mentioned, the first half of the album is a little on the disjointed side with the music skipping from idea to idea just a little too frequently. From the opening fanfare, we quickly move into light, comedic territory which gives way to a burst of drama in The Leviathan. The ideas are often fetching, but still too quickly discarded.
Performed by Mya